Microsoft’s recent announcement on adding ChatGPT AI Technology to Bing must be sending warning signals to Google on the future of search marketing. With the integration of ChatGPT in Bing, the search engine will be able to provide results in a natural language – more conversational than a list of links that is today’s norm.

The announcement follows Microsoft’s commitment to invest billions of dollars in OpenAI, the organization behind ChatGPT and Google’s announcement introducing Bard, their version of ChatGPT. On Google’s blog, they note AI “can deepen our understanding of information and turn it into useful knowledge more efficiently — making it easier for people to get to the heart of what they’re looking for and get things done.” With pages and pages of search results using today’s technology, is this a prediction of how we will be able to get more relevant information quicker and more succinctly?

Using natural language in search may just change the game in how we develop website content and search engine optimization. Rather than optimizing for key words, websites of the future may need to optimize for natural language. Especially as searches need to include content across a variety of media and social sites where internet users are spending more time and where content creation has had exponential growth.

Microsoft and Google’s investment in AI chatbots will drive this change as one company tries to outdo the other in developing the next generation of search engine.

If it changes how we search, it will alter our search engine marketing as well. How will natural language response allow for advertising? According to Microsoft, the new search engine will provide links to show where the answers are coming from. Will advertising be in the form of links in the middle of the natural language response?

The images of Google’s Bard interface shows search responses above boxed in content where one can imagine advertising will be displayed. Is advertising going to become a play for space like old school physical magazines?

Either way, the future of search engine marketing will change as AI chatbots become the engine behind the search.